From The Inside Out
by MilesTailsPrower-007
Summary: Lan and MegaMan set off into netsaver missions that they can't make sense of. On top of that, peculiar things keep happening, and it begins to get hard to make heads or tails of what's going on. What exactly are the darkloids after, anyway? NT Warrior
1. Part One

**Author's Note**: _:watches as Sonic fans scream and run for their lives: _Ehe... Yes, NT Warrior story thingy. Sorry to those of you who don't like the dub. I honestly don't mind dubs, so I like watching it. Thus, all the names are their dub names. Anyhoo, This sort of starts from what seems like the middle. It was kind of a random hit of inspiration, I guess. You can sort of... make up the beginning based on stuff that's mentioned about it a little further in, maybe. It does get better if you keep reading. I like corny friendship stuff, also! There aren't really chapters to this, soI'm gonna split it into chunks, sorta. So this is chunk one :D

Please be kind with reviews. They are very muchly appreciated. Take care :)

**PART 1**

The net warrior kept a sturdy arm around him to keep him from toppling over. "Don't get too angry, Lan. I don't want you to unintentionally dilute your thinking." He smiled lightly. "Sometimes panic and anger can be the biggest downfall in battle."

The boy felt a rush of a different kind of anger flood through him. Pulling his weight back to his own two feet, he gave MegaMan something of a solid shove. MegaMan lost his balance slightly out of surprise.

"A... are you okay?"

"You don't get it, do you?" Lan clenched a shaking fist and felt the vibration work up his whole body. The rest of him shook as heavily as his hand. "You don't understand why I'm upset! I don't think you _can_!"

MegaMan blinked in surprise. "Of couse I understand why! After something like that, you've got a right to be. I wouldn't doubt that I'd feel the same way."

"How much could you understand about it?" the brown-haired boy shot. "You're... you're a computer program! You can't understand the way I think!"

Something about the expression MegaMan gave him looked wounded. "I... Lan..." He looked somewhat lost for words. He shrugged helplessly, his green eyes still struck with hurt. He nodded weakly. There was no use arguing and angering Lan even more. He was already upset as it was, and he worried it would impair Lan's judgement in battle or thwart what remained of his patience. "Fine." Tilting his head downward a little, the peak of his helmet hid his eyes from his net-op's view. "I guess I can't understand, then. I'm sorry."

"Exactly! If you've got a brighter plan, you can go do it without me!" Lan shouted.

MegaMan too clenched a fist, but not in the same manner. He turned in the opposite direction. "If that's what you want. Raika said a netnavi is never supposed to disobey his net-op. You can fill in the plans. I'll just follow them like you say." He started walking back in the direction of the Meeting Room.

"Yeah, you do that!"

There wasn't a response. There was no more sound, except for that of MegaMan's boots against the floor. He was really going? He really didn't intend to give Lan ideas? He was just going to follow Lan's plan, he said. What..? Lan felt his shoulders relax. W- why did he just yell at his best friend? MegaMan understood him better than anyone, and yet he'd said that he _couldn't_ understand him at _all_? His heart sunk. Fatigue and frustration truly were getting the better of him. He just wanted to go home; go back to his room, and sleep. All night... all day, if he had to, just so he wouldn't feel this irritable. Now he could only imagine what MegaMan was feeling.

Even if he was a program, he had a personality file intergrated into himself. He was special. He could think independantly. He could feel anger, or fear, or happiness. ...He could feel fatigue, and frustration and pain... And he was probably just as tired. Despite all that, he never yelled at Lan, or told him his ideas were stupid, even when some of them really were. Despite everything that MegaMan dealt with and everything he tried to do, Lan had just _blown up at him_?

"MegaMan, wait..!"

Lan threw himself unto a run and chased after his friend, stopping in front of him to bar the way. "Don't go, okay? I know you can feel. You can just as much as I can. I... I shouldn't have said that to you."

The figure said nothing.

"Oh... MegaMan, I'm sorry!" Lan hit his fist lightly on the navi's chest, trying to fight himself from crying in frustration. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He lowered his head, trembling slightly. He felt like screaming, getting mad, anything but this. Anything but making himself look small and frustrated, which was really how he felt. Tears welled up in his eyes, stinging as he fought fruitlessly to hold them back any longer. "...I'm sorry..!" he choked, falling into the blue-clad net warrior's arms, shaking.

It felt strange to be against him like this. He truly was by no means like any living being. The closest thing to a heartbeat that could be felt beneath Lan's cheek was the pulse of data moving through the digital figure. He felt MegaMan's arm press around his shoulders.

"It's alright, Lan."

There it was again. His completely undying patience. He didn't sound angry, or shaken, or flustered. He felt none of the uselessly negative things Lan felt right now, and if he did, he was famously good at hiding it. Lan was unsure if it made him feel more solid and comforting, or much less easy to relate to all of a sudden. It didn't matter. They were both tired, and they were both unsure of where they had to end up in the long run. How much longer could Lan go on without sleep before collapsing? How much more time was there before MegaMan had a prgram overload and had to shut down to repair? How much time did they have before they both gave out altogether?

However long it was, they'd indefinately last longer if they stuck together. They were a team.

Lan squeezed his eyes closed, and a tear gushed down his face. With his arm still around his net-op's shoulders, MegaMan smiled very softly. "Everything is going to be okay, Lan. We can do this, right?"

Trying to quell the negative emotion that was being charged off of his fatigue, Lan nodded. "We can do this." He took a step back from MegaMan and placed a hand on his shoulder. "..Because we are a team!" He rubbed gingerly at his eyes and managed a smile. "No more fighting, alright?"

"Alright." MegaMan smiled in return. "Although, I think we can keep the corny friendship talks _in_ this time. They do seem to help."

"Yeah, I agree." Lan paused, and his cheeks reddened slightly. "Just please don't tell anybody about the way I cried on you, okay?"

The netnavi laughed. "You got a deal."

* * *

It was alot of wandering. It seemed like hours worth of it; just aimlessly wandering up and down the halls of the building, listening to the silence that pressed in all around them like a thick smog. Up the stairways, down the halls, through the rooms... then they'd simply loop around until they were back where they'd began and they'd find a new course to wander along. Lan's feet started to hurt from all the walking. He wondered several times if MegaMan experienced the same thing, but it seemed silly to ask, so he didn't.

The lack of viruses was probably what seemed the most peculiar. The walls and floor were funny looking in the dimensional area, almost rainbow-hued in appearance. Lan sighed in a both bored and tired manner. How long would it be before he could get out of here and sleep again? His eyes had begun to blur his vision and now he was starting to feel groggy. MegaMan yawned too, covering his mouth with the back of his blue gloved hand. "Sorry," he apologized meekly, as though he'd just done something wrong.

"How long has it been?" Lan asked somewhat impatiently.

MegaMan pulled up a translucent green pixel screen in front of himself in under a second and tapped on it once. "4:37:52am," he responded. "Why?"

His net-op groaned. "It's only been like... ten minutes since I last asked you. I coulda sworn we've been walking longer than that..!"

Clunk.

Lan lifted his head. "What was that?" He and his friend both froze, although the sound of breathing might stop them from hearing anything else. It was a distinctive noise; like someone chipping away at something, then managing to tear off a sizable portion before letting it drop to the floor. It didn't sound like something heavy, though; almost like plastic. Plastic? There was alot of plastic in this building..! There were computers, firstly, and other machines that had plastic shells or outer coverings. "Which way is it coming from?" Lan asked, his voice so quiet it nearly suprised him. MegaMan pointed forward down the hall. "Somewhere down there," he calculated. "I think we should try going down the left corridor first."

"You got it!"

The two rushed down the hallway and took the left route. An empty hallway greeted them. Not even the sound was there anymore. Where had it gone? In under a minute, it started again. The sound reminded Lan of mining, and mining reminded him of picks, which in turn, reminded him of mett viruses. "Maybe there are some metts around here somewhere," he guessed. "They might make a sound kinda like that."

"Yeah, but Lan, mett viruses don't actually ever manage to break things off. They just sort of stab at it. It seems to do its job, anyway." The blue figure walked ahead of Lan, scouting out the hallway. "Come on! Down here!"

Lan raced after him, his footsteps pounding down on the empty hallway. "I think the control room is down here. They store the main computer database in there. But who else would have access to something like that? Can we even get in?"

MegaMan looked over his shoulder at him as they ran. "I think we can. All the systems are running a glitch. I can probably input some kind of fake code. It might even take that. It's sure worth a try." He stopped in front of the door. It was heavy and laden with electronic locks. There had likely been a recent and severe security upgrade since the last time the darkloids had attemped to gain access to the data stored in the database. It seemed like kind of a waste now; the dimensional area, among other things, had made it run amok, and MegaMan had extreme ease of effort in getting it open.

AGH0264781020410000176937

110732659713294790068MRA1

The navi's gloved hands flew over the keys, pressing them so fast that Lan probably never would have guessed which ones he was pressing, if not for the way they were being displayed on a little LCD screen after he chose them. Lan frowned, trying to see some sort of a pattern. He couldn't see anything, though. Just a jumble of numbers with afew letters thrown in. "I don't get it."

MegaMan frowned and retried. "There isn't any logic to what I'm pressing, to be honest. I'm just choosing 25 characters-- 22 digits and 3 randomly generated letters. The verification is so bad on this thing that as long as I keep trying, we'll eventually get in. The system is too easy to hack when it's weak." He tried three more codes, and a beep sounded.

"VERIFIED. WELCOME, DR. SANRIO."

Lan quirked an eyebrow. "Huh. That was weird. At least it worked, though."

His best friend stared in disbelief at the opening doors. "It looks like there's a seperate code for each of the scientists, or something like that. They should change that! The more access codes there are, the easier it is to hack into it. I can't believe they would think of something like that."

"If dad were here, I'm sure he'd have done something about it."

"Heh, I'm sure he would, Lan. But we need to get moving. C'mon!" Without further hesitation, MeganMan ran into the room. The central system stood in the center of it. Colored lights blinked from various places on it, and it hummed quietly in the silence. Apparently, it was on. The net navi paused, glancing around the room with just his eyes. His body remained stiff as a board. "I could have sworn it was---"

"Ah, MegaMan. Good of you to join me. I see you brought your 'better half', too."

MegaMan looked frantically around the room, confused at his inability to see who was speaking to him. "Who are you? Better yet, _where_ are you?"

The voice laughed. It was a strange soft laugh, though, like the way an adult would laugh at the naive and silly mistake of a young child. "Is that really what's important right now? Or wouldn't you rather get out of here first?"

"I... T- that's besides the point! Are you the one leading this operation?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Well, yeah..!"

The voice purred almost intellectually, if that were possible. "MegaMan... All you want is to get out of here! You want to get to the bottom of all this so that you can go home. You're worried about your net-op, and you think that his parents are probably concerned by now. Isn't that right?"

"Stop stalling, you creepy guy who's probably lodged in the ceiling!" Lan's unintelligent rebuttal resulted in MegaMan giving him something of a flat stare. Ignoring that, Lan clentched a fist, and looked viciously around the room. "You're not going to scare us, okay?"

"Lan Hikari... I intended to do nothing of the sort! I just wanted to warn you to stay out of the way of the darkloids. We've taken what we needed, and so we shall be going now. Stay out of our way, and we won't have to eliminate you or MegaMan. It sounds like a fair bargain to me."

"But if you'retaking data that could threaten the whole city, it's not much of a fair deal at all!" Lan cried. "We don't want the darkloids to take over the net!"

A sigh. "I haven't time to argue with you, I'm afraid. I must be going. For your own sakes, however, please stay out of my affairs in the future. You'd be most appreciative of the warning if you knew just what is at stake if you do not heed it."

"Hey! What do you mean by that?"

No response.

"Hello?" He stopped. "What..?" Lan looked confused. He shot MegaMan a questioning glance, and the navi responded by shaking his head. His body visably relaxed.

"He's gone, Lan," he said simply.

Outside, the dimensional area was fading away. The translucent dome covering the perimeter of SciLab quickly fell away, and whatever traces of the net had been brought into the real world via it began to dissapear, too. Much like when jacking out of the network, MegaMan was extracted back into the PET, and the blue machine let out a small sound to indicate that the navi had returned. Lan blinked in surprise, not having expected his friend to dissapear from in front of him.

"MegaMan?"

"The dimensional area went away," MegaMan explained as his net-op pulled the PET from the pouch attached to his side. He gave Lan a puzzled expression through the screen. "I wonder who's behind all this?"

"Beats me..." Lan realised now that his eyelids felt heavy, as did most of his body. He hadn't noticed it as much before. Maybe the feeling that something interesting was about to happen had prevented him from feeling tired previously. His knees buckled, and he sunk onto them on the linoleum, letting his head fall to his chest.

"Lan? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, MegaMan. Don't worry. Just kinda tired, that's all." He slowly stood up, trudging back down the hallway. "I sure am glad for elevators," he said quietly as he headed for one. Without anything in the building to be on the look-out for, he wouldn't need to take the stairs. Hooray.

Taking the elevator down to the first floor, Lan groaned as a thought occured to him. "I gotta walk all the way home! Awww, man..!" He picked up his backpack from where he'd left it on the front desk and heaved it over his shoulder as though it weighed a thousand pounds before walking to the front door. He took the snap-on wheels for his sneakers from out of his backpack and attatched them to his shoes before gliding easily out the door, PET still in hand. The sun had thrown hazy warm colors into the sky by that point. The morning light was coming quickly.

"I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about a threat we couldn't even see," MegaMan admitted, silently considering the ways by which the villain could have been communicating without becoming visable. "He just shut everything down on us like we weren't even a threat."

"We'll think about it after I complete the human ritual called 'sleep'," Lan replied with a yawn. "I'll put the PET into sleep mode for the night, and you can run a bug check on yourself in the morning." The wheels of his inline skates rolled almost rythmically against the pavement. It wouldn't be long now...

* * *

Lan Hikari collapsed face first onto his bed without a second thought to it. He let his backpack slide off his shoulder and onto the floor next to him with a mighty thud. The PET landed on the bed next to him, but he didn't even have time to do anything with it. He was asleep the instant he hit his bed. MegaMan smiled vaguely. "Sleep well, Lan. You do deserve it." He, too, retired for the night, and the PET screen went dark.

It didn't feel like a very long time. In fact, it didn't even feel like an hour. Lan groggily lifted his head and rubbed at his eyes. Morning sunshine poured through the glass door near the head of his bed, but he hardly noticed it. He looked around very drowsily for his PET. "MegaMan..?" he half mumbled in query. From the floor, MegaMan's green eyes followed him through the screen of the handheld terminal. "Down here." He watched as Lan reached over the side of the bed and blindly fumbled until he managed to hook the peculiar handle on the side of the PET with his index finger. He pulled his arm back onto the bed, and brought the PET up in front of his face, rubbing at his eyes again.

"Glad to see you're awake," MegaMan said.

Lan yawned. "What time is it?"

"17:37:12PM," the navi answered. "You've been asleep all day."

The boy jolted with surprise. "Five thirty?" He sat up, only then realising that he had neglected to take the wheels off of his sneakers. He'd forgotten to take his sneakers off at all. He untied them and pulled them off. The house seemed quiet. Lan wandered out into the livingroom. He could see into the kitchen from where he stood. His mother was sitting at the table by herself, drinking a cup of what was probably coffee. The TV was on in the livingroom, so Lan suspected she was listening to the news from where she was. He wondered why he couldn't hear the TV through his bedroom door.

"Mom?"

Lan's mother glanced in his direction. "Lan! You're up! How are you feeling?"

"Feeling?" Lan repeated. "Fine..! I overslept, though. Spending all night in a dimensional area really wears you out."

"I can imagine..!" She took a sip of her drink before looking at the boy again. Her eyes fell upon the PET in his hand. "And good morning to you, too, MegaMan."

MegaMan smiled. "Good morning, Mom. Don't worry about Lan. I'll make sure he catches up on all of the homework he ends up missing because of NetSaver missions."

Lan groaned. "Not homework..! We just got stuck in a dimensional area for thirteen hours and you're talking about helping me catch up at school? C'mon, MegaMan. Cut me some slack!"

"I cut you enough slack already," MegaMan said a little too honestly."I'm not even supposed to be _helping you_ with your math..!"

His net-op pouted, and Mrs. Hikari laughed. "Take it easy, you two. Are you hungry, Lan? I saved you some dinner just in case. It's in the oven so it wouldn't get cold, okay?"

"Sounds good!" Lan dropped his PET on the tabletop and immediatly rushed to seize his food. "Ooh! Fried chicken! Awesome!" He grabbed some cutlery and sat down at his respective place at the table. No sooner had he picked up his fork when he was interupted by a shrill ringing sound.

"Lan, it's your phone," said MegaMan.

"I know that!" Lan grumbled frustratedly, fumbling across the table for his PET. He held it up in front of his face. "Hello?"

Famous' face blinked onto the screen. "NetSaver Lan! Report to SciLab immediatly. The computer systems all shut down suddenly about ten minutes ago, and they can't get anything running. There are concerns that there will be a city-wide net loss if this keeps up, due to the same problem. If no-one can get online for a period of several days because of problems that need fixing, it will cause even _bigger_ problems. Can you get over there?"

Lan looked as though he couldn't be any more discouraged. "Can I at least finish my dinner..?"

"Take it with you, perhaps. Anyhow, the point is, you need to get over there soon. Famous, over and out." The image of his face blinked out in the same manner it had appeared in.

"What's going on, Lan?" Mrs. Hikari queried.

"We've got another netsaver mission," MegaMan responded. "It looks like those darkloids are dead set on getting whatever it is that they're after. Come on, Lan!"

"Goodness... This is awfully sudden. Make sure you eat something before you go, alright?"

"That I can do, mom," Lan replied, swiftly trying to wolf down as much as he could, expecting that if he didn't hurry, Famous would call again, barking at him to get moving. In five minutes, he'd finished everything in front of him. Jamming the PET into the pouch at his side, he dashed into his room to retrieve his backpack and rushed out the front door. Mrs. Hikari sighed. No one home again...

The phone rang, and she went to answer it. "Hello?" A familiar face popped up. His hair was slightly untidy, but that seemed to be the standard for him when he was at work. "Oh! Yuuichiro! It's good to hear from you!"

Her husband smiled and pushed up his glasses. "Yes! It seems like there's an endless load of net problems over here. How are things over there?"

"Fine, dear. Lan just dashed out the door again though, I'm afraid."

"Ah, he's taking after me, I suppose." Mr. Hikari laughed. "Has he been doing what I instructed?"

"What was that, dear?"

"I told him that after every time he enters a dimensional area and allows MegaMan to materialize in it, he needs to go home and run a bug check. After every ten times or so, he has to go over to SciLab and upload the navi program onto my computer to do an analysis. I want to ensure there are no adverse or harmful effects on MegaMan from jacking into a half-net world."

"I'm sure he's been doing it. He always remembers to do his computer-related work. I wish I could say the same about his chores..."

"Haha! Boys will be boys, Haruka. He'll learn if we keep after him. I just wanted to tell you that I'll probably be home the day after tommorrow if nothing else goes wrong over here. Send Lan my love."

"I will. Take care of yourself, Yuuichiro. I love you."

"I love you, too. See you soon. Bye."

* * *

Lan's sneakers thudded rapidly against the sidewalk as he ran, and he clumsily threw his backpack over one shoulder. It bounced against his back as he continued, beginning to pant from the run. "Stupid Mr. Famous and my stupid netsaver missions during dinner," he grumbled. "I didn't even have time to put on my rollerblades."

MegaMan chuckled. "...But you had time to finish eating? That's strange," he said teasingly.

"Hey, be quiet." Lan tried to ignore him. How could MegaMan sound lighthearted at a time like this? How much sleep were they going to end up losing? There was no way to know how long they'd be there. What if there were dimensional area generators? Judging by their recent encouters with them, they'd probably be there awhile. "Why do _you_ sound so perky anyway?"

The netnavi ignored his net-op's moodiness. "We won't be there long, Lan. Don't worry. You're just a little grumpy because you just got up and you had to rush through your dinner."

"I'm not grumpy," Lan responded irritably as he ran. "I'm just not up to net-saving right now."

Lan didn't have much to worry about. Reaching the front doors of SciLab, he was greeted with an unexpected encounter. Someone else was already unlocking the frontdoors of the building and heading in to deal with his job. Someone with a red vest. Lan's eyes went wide. "Oh, what?" He raced in after the figure, who was walking calmly towards the stairs that lead up to the room where the main computer system was located.

"CHAUD!"

The boy calmly glanced back over his shoulder. "Oh. Hello Lan. I don't have time to talk right now. I need to go stop whatever is faulting up the computers." His hands were in his pockets, and he seemed collected and vaguely dutiful at the same time. He headed up the stairs, completely disregarding Lan. The brown-haired boy almost shook with frustration.

"Arrrrrgh! That stupid Chaud! He thinks he's so much better than I am!" Frowning, he pulled out his PET. "Come on, MegaMan. Let's go show him that we're not useless!" He ran up the stairs Chaud had taken.

Unfortunately, Chaud seemed to have gotten 'crafty' in the thirty-five seconds since Lan had last laid eyes on him, and he didn't seem to be anywhere in sight. Lan ran frustratedly down the hall, discovering that either the high-security door was still open from the previous day, or Chaud had opened it himself. He peeked into the room. No Chaud? Argh! Where could he have possibly gotten to? "Stupid Chaud," Lan mumbled again. Next to him, a door slid open. He jumped. Chaud smirked vaguely at the response, his face immediatly going cold again afterward. "Excuse me, Lan," he said briefly, walking past him into the room.

"Rrrrrrr..." Lan's hand clutching the PET quivered. MegaMan laughed. "You're just jealous because he acts so much more collected than you do," he said playfully. Lan didn't hesitate to ignore him. He stormed after Chaud, who had already jacked Protoman into the system.

"I was sent here for a netsaver mission. I didn't hear anything about you coming along. What're you doing here?" Lan tried to keep a straight face. He was honestly a little annoyed that Chaud had been sent over like this. Did Famous think he couldn't handle it by himself because of how he'd gotten stuck in a dimensional area twice now? It wasn't his fault, anyway..!

Chaud only partially turned, his red PET in his hand. His other hand was in his pocket. There were probably battle chips in there, just in case. "I was sent here because you didn't come when you were supposed to."

"Didn't come?" Lan halted himself from sounding crazy. "Errr, well I'm here now!"

"They sent you almost twenty minutes ago. It shouldn't have taken that long." Chaud's straight face made Lan want to twitch in aggitation. What was so good about Chaud and Protoman? He and MegaMan were just as good netsavers, if not better. Besides, Lan could win a hundred straight battles in the net arcade. Could Chaud do that? Lan doubted it. As much as he disliked having to rush dinner, or lose sleep, he was a little dissapointed about this event.

"You can go home. I have this under control."

Lan wanted to argue, and from his slightly tilted position in Lan's hand, MegaMan could see that. "You heard him," he said, trying not to sound like he was siding with Chaud, and hoping that he could prevent his net-op from trying to argue with him. "Let's go home, okay?" Much to his relief, Lan didn't object.

"...Okay."

The boy turned around somewhat disheartenedly and trudged out of the room. Chaud hardly noticed him leave. Protoman was busy checking out the system, but finding absolutely no flaw, virus or any other kind of hinderance that could be preventing the system from running properly. However, he would not show defeat. They hadn't been here long enough for him to do that. They were netsavers. Failure was not an option right now. He would just have to keep looking. "I don't see anything," Protoman reported sternly, "but I think the best thing to do would be to unlock another level of security and check further in."

"Security breach permitted." Chaud loaded up a high-level unlocker program. "You can access the next level if you like."

Protoman gave a single nod in response, and headed off into a more heavily protected section of the system. Everything was desolate. No navis, no viruses, no darkloids, no--- Wait, what was..?


	2. Part Two

**Author's Note**: Thank you a ton to the people who read this. I appreciate it. :D

I noticed there seems to be some puncuation that doesn't like.Question mark-exclaimation mark, in particular. Also, there's a math equasion in here somewhere, and since the site might not take my use of the equasion mark, I wrote it out in words instead. Hehe. Anyhow, please enjoy!

**PART II:**

Lan pushed open the frontdoor. "I'm baaack," he called dimly. His mother looked up from reading a magazine on the couch, somewhat surprised to see her son home so soon.

"Your father called. He thinks he should be home in afew days, anyhow. How did the netsaver mission go?"

"Bad," grumbled Lan, taking a seat at the kitchen table. "Stupid Chaud got there first, so they handed the mission over to him."

"That's too bad," Mrs. Hikari said, judging that this was likely the most appropriate thing to say. "At least you can get a good night's sleep tonight, then, and you can go back to school tommorrow, right? I'm sure your friends have missed you."

"Your homework needs to be done, too," MegaMan reminded.

"I know..."

"Awww, come on Lan! Don't be in such a sour mood." The netnavi smiled, trying to cheer him up. "Besides, when you get back to school, you can ask Dex if he wants to come down to the net arcade after school and have a net battle with us! It'll be fun."

Lan fidgetted in his chair and rested his cheek against the palm of his hand. "I guess so. I don't feel like finishing that stupid math homework right now, though."

"Go and get it," his mother urged. "MegaMan will help you, won't he?"

"I will," he assured.

In fifteen minutes' time, Lan was sitting as his desk in his bedroom, frustratedly trying to figure out a math problem. He erased the problem again and re-copied it out of the text book for what had to be the seven or eighth time. It was getting harder to erase each time, however. He could still see pencil marks from the previous tries. "I just don't get it! Ms. Mari didn't explain it well enough!"

"She did," MegaMan countered patiently, "but you were almost asleep by then and weren't listening."

Lan sighed and drummed the eraser end of his pencil on the desk. "I don't like this kind of math. It's too hard. There are too many ways to do it, so now they're all messed up in my head!"

From his place in the PC, MegaMan watched Lan stare distractedly out the glass door and onto the lawn. He looked over his homework, but it was difficult, since from his view, it was upside down. "What was the question again, Lan?"

"Four minus three'X'equals'X' minus twelve."

MegaMan wrote out a digital version of the equasion on the screen. "Look," he said. "Move all the variables onto one side like this, and-"

"What's a variable?"

"The x," MegaMan answered. "Anyway, move all the variables onto one side like this." He demonstrated. "When numbers cross over onto the other side, they inverse, though. Now that x is a -x, and--"

"Oh. Now I remember." Lan picked up his pencil and jotted down an answer for what was likely the ninth time. "Is this right..?"

"Yeah! Good job, Lan! See? It's easy!"

"If only I didn't have fourteen more questions left, though." He resumed trying to finish his math homework. Yai and Maylu could finish stuff like this in ten minutes. Why was it that whenever he tried, time seemed to pass very slowly? It felt like it took forever to finish one question, let alone fifteen of them. Stupid math. And stupid Chaud for taking his netsaver mission. If he was out netsaving, he wouldn't have to do his homework.

"Lan!"

He snapped back into reality. "Sorry," he said, flashing a somewhat guilty smile at MegaMan. "I'll work on it now, I promise." He picked up the PET. "MegaMan, jack out!" The navi's image dissapeared from the screen of the PC and back onto the PET screen. Setting the handheld terminal down again, he started on question number two. It was quiet. MegaMan had decided to sort Lan's email for something to do, so he wasn't saying anything, either. It was best to let Lan concentrate on his homework. Forty-five minutes passed. Lan only got stuck once or twice, but he figured it out after afew tries. At last, he finished his homework. "AHA!" he cried victoriously, causing MegaMan to jolt with surprise. "I FINISHED IT! I'm such a genius!"

"Hehe, good for you, Lan! I told you you'd get through it. Now you won't have to worry when Ms. Mari does a homework check tomorrow."

The brown haired boy relaxed in his chair with a grin. Ah, it was good to be done. He, the mighty Lan, had conquered the previously impassible Mount Algebra Homework. Truly, there was none mightier than him..! Well, except MegaMan, since he was the one who knew how to do it first. Oh well. That was overlookable right now.

The PET rang. Who would be calling right now, anyway?

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT!

Lan and MegaMan both flinched. "What the heck was that?" Lan squacked. "It sounded like one of those old things people used to send paper with!"

"A fax machine," MegaMan said, supplying Lan with the word he'd been looking for. "I guess it did sound like that. I wonder what it was for?"

"Prob'ly some stupid prankster going through the DenTech phone directory again."

"Wouldn't be the first time, heh." The blue net warrior yawned and stretched. "Now that your homework is out of the way, we can go and do something else without having to worry about it." He smiled in his regular manner. "So what would you like to do?"

His net-op stared at the ceiling and leaned back on his chair so that the front two legs lifted off the carpet. He yawned, too. "Ah, I dunno."

He let the chair's legs fall back onto the floor and stood up. "I guess there's not much we _can_ do. It's evening now. None of my friends can come play outside, so I guess soccer isn't in. I probably won't see anybody until tommorrow." He sighed distractedly, pacing back across his room before seating himself on the edge of his bed and dropping the PET down next to him. MegaMan gave him a baffled look. "Are you still moping because of Chaud?" he asked. "We'll get other chances, Lan."

"I know. But..."

MegaMan tilted his head slightly, wondering if his facial expression at all reflected the bit of concern welling within him. "But...?"

Lan hung his head, unable to admitt -even to MegaMan- that he was getting worried about the state the net was in, and the thought of an unknown threat seemed sort of unrealistic, but frightening. He didn't say anything.

"Lan?"

His dark brown eyes fell upon the PET. MegaMan's green eyes watched him silently as he awaited a response. "You can tell me the truth, okay?" he offered. "You know I won't tell anyone."

"MegaMan..." The way Lan said it, it sounded like the world was about to crash down on his head, and this was one of the last things he'd ever say. "I know I'm not the smartest kid out there, but all of what's going on is kind of freaky. What if we don't figure this out? I don't want the whole net to get messed up..!"

MegaMan closed his eyes and smiled vaguely for a second before looking back up at Lan. "You know what makes us special, Lan? We aren't alike. ProtoMan is quiet like Chaud. SearchMan is quick-thinking and analytical like Raika. But you and I aren't alike; not as much as them. Sometimes we don't even get along, but our differences are what end up helping us to learn. We _learn_ to get along. We _learn_ each other's strong and weak points. That's what makes us a team, and that's why we win in netbattles, and beat the darkloids. We don't let uncertainty and worry get the better of us. Okay..?"

Lan had his head down, emitting only a small amount of noise. For a second, MegaMan thought he was crying. No such luck. The boy threw his head back, laughing. His navi blinked in surprise. "Uhm, are you okay?"

Lan grinned and held the PET up in front of his face at eye level. "I'm fine. You say some really corny stuff, y'know." The grin softened to a friendly smile. "But I appreciate it. You're right. Thanks." The little blue machine vibrated momentarily in his hand, indicating he'd recieved e-mail. "E-mail?" he said in surprise. "Who's it from?"

"You got two simultaneously," replied MegaMan. "One is from Chaud, and the other is from Maylu."

"Read 'em!"

"You got it. I'll read Chaud's first." He pulled up the text file. "'I apologise about earlier. See you.' That was brief... It doesn't seem within his character to be apologising, either. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

His net-op shrugged. "Meh. Let him apologize, I guess. Maybe he's getting nicer? Read Maylu's e-mail."

"Alright." The navi pulled up a new text file. "'Lan, I hope you haven't forgotten about the science test on Thursday! You probably did, though, so I sent you this e-mail to remind you. Ms. Mari won't be too happy if you keep getting bad marks, you know. See you at school! -Maylu.'" He eyed Lan expectantly. "Science test?"

The boy's face went red. "I uh... forgot to tell you..?" he suggested.

"Where was I when she told the class about that?" MegaMan queried.

"She told us the morning I forgot my PET on the kitchen counter," Lan admitted, embarrassed. "Mom brought it to me at school in the afternoon, and that's why you didn't find out."

"Oh brother." MegaMan shook his head. "Another reason why you can't forget me at home! It's too late to study now, though. You still need to take a shower and get ready for bed. I'll get you up early tommorrow and you can study, okay?"

Lan groaned. "I hate it how you seem to know my schedule better than I do..." He went to retrieve his pyjamas. "I'll jack you into the net while I'm busy so that you can do something while you're waiting for me." Setting his folded night clothes on the bed, he pointed the PET at his PC. "Jack in! MegaMan, power-up!" The navi appeared on the PC screen, and he set the PET down on the desk next to it. "So, I'll be back in a bit. Maybe someone else is online for you to talk to."

"That's possible. I'll take a look. See you, Lan!"

"See ya." Lan picked up his pyjamas off the bed and headed out of the room. With Lan now gone, MegaMan decided to take his advice and head into the net. One of Lan's friends navis could be online, in which case, he could find some company. He'd have to head over to someone else's PC via the net, most likely. Roll was probably helping Maylu study for that science test. She liked to encourage her net-op to keep her marks up. MegaMan wished he could do the same for Lan, but the boy's lack of interest in school made it hard for him to pay attention. Wandering through the local area network, he didn't pass anybody he knew. Maybe they were offline. Oh well. Looking around was something to do, anyway, so he couldn't complain. Wait! He caught sight of a recognisable figure. "NumberMan!" he said pleasantly, heading over to the navi.

"Oh, hello, MegaMan! How have you been?" asked NumberMan. The lights on his head blinked on and off in several places.

"I'm well! How's Higsby's shop?"

"Good, good. Higsby's been doing a big inventory check, so there might be a sale soon. I thought Lan might be interested."

"He probably will be. I'll tell him as soon as I jack out. Say, have you seen anybody else around?"

"Glide bought a memory upgrade from me awhile ago, but I think he jacked out," NumberMan answered. "I think I saw GutsMan head back to Dex's PC, too. Maybe if you head over there, you might catch him. If Dex was in any sort of a hurry, he'd probably have jacked out from here!"

"That's true," MegaMan replied. "Thanks! It was good talking to you."

"And the same to you, MegaMan! Bye for now!"

"Bye." He gave a brief wave, and then headed off for Dex's PC. Dex and GutsMan were keen netbattlers, so GutsMan would probably be eager to tell him anything new he'd learned about the world of netbattling, or about any challengers he'd 'beaten to a pulp' recently. MegaMan chuckled a little at the thought. GutsMan hadn't beaten him in a netbattle yet, but he always put forth full efforts for Dex' sake. He just wanted to make Dex proud of him.

It wasn't much of a trip over to Dex's PC. There weren't any viruses this time. There was probably a clean-up recently, which would explain that. Taking the route in, MegaMan discovered that Dex' computer was looking something more tidy than usual. Maybe he got a new firewall or something? Something that permitted navis with passcodes to get through, anyway. At least he was verified and could get in. Wandering into the PC, it was quiet. Very quiet, especially for the home of a netnavi so large and clunky looking. "GutsMan?"

He was answered by a large wailing sound. His stomach would have turned if he had one. Glancing around, MegaMan caught sight of GutsMan. He was slumped in a sitting position over to the far side. What was going on? MegaMan ran over to him. "GutsMan! Are you alright?" He placed one blue gloved hand on Gutsman's broad trembling shoulder. One massive hand was covering his face, and his mass of a body was shaking. Was he... crying? It was certainly an awkward sight. "What the matter..?"

GutsMan sniffled loudly. "I don't know what to do, MegaMan..!" He proceeded to bawling. "You can help me, right? What should.. should I do? GutsMan don't know anymore..."

"Help you with what? What happened?"

"I want to make Roll like me..!" he sniffled. MegaMan wasn't expecting that sort of an answer. He blinked stupidly.

"Doesn't she like you already?"

"Like me more, I mean. Soon it will be the anniversary of when she met Maylu. I want to get her a present! Impress her! Make her happy with Gutsman!" He looked at MegaMan, his watery eyes still gushing digital tears. "So what should I do, MegaMan?"

MegaMan smiled. "Don't worry so much, first of all. Get her something you think that she would like. Well... of course, you might have to ask Dex for help, but that's not the point. Do the best you can! You know that Roll appreciates that sort of thing."

"O- okay." GutsMan sniffled again, and wiped at his eyes carefully with one of his oversized hands. "Thank you, MegaMan. GutsMan appreciates the help. Now I can tell Dex about what you said. You think Maylu likes the same?"

"I wouldn't doubt it."

The less than graceful navi got to his feet. "Thank you, MegaMan." He gave a hearty smile and patted MegaMan's shoulder with his heavy hand, almost forcing him to his knees from the pressure. MegaMan managed a friendly smile nonetheless."Glad to help, then."

Dex's pudgy face appeared from outside the PC. "GutsMan! What're you doin'? Are we gonna practise our netbattlin' or what? We gotta kick Lan's butt at school tommorrow!" His eyes widened as he realised MegaMan was standing right next to his own navi. "Err--- You heard me!" he said ferociously, trying to make himself sound threatening enough to make up for his lack of observational skills. "GutsMan's gonna kick your butt tommorrow, MegaMan! Be prepared!"

MegaMan chuckled. "Thanks for the warning. Lan always brings a pocket full of battle chips to school, anyway."

"Tell 'im to bring out the heavy artillery, 'cause we ain't holdin' back this time!"

"Alright."

Lan's navi's patience seemed to aggitate Dex. He didn't seem scared at all! Didn't he realise that Dex and GutsMan were planning to cream him? Dex tried not to let his short temper get the better of him. "--Don't you have to be jacking out soon?" he hinted, almost rudely.

MegaMan checked the time. "Oh! You're right. I probably do. I've gotta defragment Lan's computer before he has to go to bed, so I should head back to his PC. I almost forgot. Thank you." He gave a smile and nod toward Dex. "See you tommorrow."

"Bye, MegaMan!" said GutsMan cheerily as the navi headed out.

Dex grumbled as he watched him go. "Whaddarya doin', GutsMan? Rule number one: Hate your enemies!"

GutsMan scratched his head in confusion. "I thought it was 'Love your enemies'."

"Forget that!" Dex enforced. "_Hate_ your enemies, especially MegaMan."

"But I like Mega---"

"I said HATE."

"Okay..." GutsMan was used to this. At least once a week, Dex would decide he hated Lan, and that Lan was his mortal enemy. And when Dex decided to hate Lan, GutsMan had to pretend to hate MegaMan... Just to please Dex. Peculiarly enough, once in a blue moon, Dex would come home from school beaming about how _cool_ Lan was. What a strange and indecisisive boy.

Once MegaMan returned to Lan's PC, he began trying to defragment files. With the amount of junk Lan stored on his computer, it was always a wise idea to try and make a little more space. Getting rid of fragmented files and moving over what could be moved usually brought up at least an extra couple of megabytes of space. The thought of being jacked into a lagging computer made MegaMan slightly uneasy. It had hardly been ten minutes when a blue pyjama-wearing, soggy-haired Lan trudged back into the room, rubbing at his head with a towel in an attempt to absorb some of the water out of his hair. He glanced at the PC. "Whatcha up to, MegaMan?"

"Nothing much," MegaMan responded, compacting some files. "I went around the net for a bit, and then over to Dex's PC. He says he wants to netbattle us tommorrow."

"Haha! That's nothing new!" Lan grinned cheekily. "He should know by now that he's just gonna get his butt kicked!"

"I started defragmenting files on your computer," MegaMan added. "It might save you some space. Are you going to bed now?"

"Naw," Lan said easily, sitting down in his computer chair. "Chisow called and told me about this great website where you can download full versions of comics! They even have the first edition of Spiderman on there-- and that's pretty old!"

"So what would you like me to do?"

"You can finish what you're doing tommorrow," Lan decided. "Check out the site called 'Comics 'R' Us! We gotta download some comic pages!"

"'Comics 'R' Us'?" repeated MegaMan. "You got it..! That's a pretty bad name, though."

"Oh well. The content's good, anyway!"

"Well, okay." MegaMan brought up an internet browser window and started loading the said webpage. It only took a couple of seconds. The banner didn't look even a quarter as tacky as he had imagined, even with an unoriginal name like 'Comics 'R' Us'. The layout was well thought up, too; very organised and easy to navigate. It was easy to find what you wanted. There was a section for each comic, which brought up a seperate page listing the issues they'd put up so far. Choosing an issue, you could then choose the page or 'chapter', depending on how long of a comic book it was. "Alright, here we are."

"Spidernan!" Lan said enthusiastically.

MegaMan loaded the page.

"Lan Hikari!" Mrs. Hikari poked her head into the doorway. "You should be getting into bed right now! You can play on the internet tomorrow."

Lan groaned. "Aww, but I was gonna read some comics!"

"Bed, please. You have school tomorrow. Good night, sweetheart."

"...Night, mom."

"Good night, MegaMan," Mrs. Hikari said.

"Good night!" He looked at Lan as Mrs. Hikari wandered off. "Come on, Lan. We'll finish this tomorrow, okay?"

"I have a better idea," proposed Lan. "I have to go to bed, but that doesn't mean _you_ do. So, that means you can stay online and download that stuff for me!"

"...how much 'stuff'?"

His net-op pondered momentarily. "As much as they've posted so far, I guess. Make a file in 'My Pictures' called 'Spiderman'. Then, you can organise the issues whatever way you want, as long as I can still figure it out."

"As much as they've posted?" MegaMan repeated incredulously. "That's... 117 issues! The pages are scanned at high resolution for better quality, so they're probably around a hundred kilobytes each. Lan, this'll take a ton of hard drive space!"

"Oh well. I've got enough space for it. I can delete it after I read it, anyway. This way, there won't be any loading time when I go to red 'em, too!"

"Alright..."

"G'night MegaMan!"

"Good night, Lan. I'll get you up early to study for that test, too."

Lan flinched. Why did MegaMan always have to remember that stuff? He closed the long shades that covered the glass door and window and flicked off the light. By the light of the computer screen, he fumbled his way through his bedroom over to his bed and crawled into it.

"You forgot to put your towel away," said MegaMan.

"Argh!" Lan got up, turned on his light again, picked up his damp towel from off the back of his computer chair and wandered into the bathroom to put it away. He returned in afew moments, flicking off the light again and jumping onto his bed. "Good night."

"Sleep well." And with a sigh, MegaMan proceeded to follow Lan's download request. It was going to be a long night...

Lan Hikari woke up due to the unpleasant sound of his father's retro music. He groaned, smushing his pillow over his head in an attempt to block out the sound. The music stopped, turning into an aggitating beep. He shifted stiffly and pressed the pillow over his head even harder. RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING! He jumped in surprise, nearly falling off the side of his bed. All of the blankets tumbled over the side. He pouted and rubbed at his eyes, turning over groggily to face the PC screen. "You seem tactical this morning..." he said aggitatedly to MegaMan.

"I tried calling you, but you didn't even move," MegaMan replied. "I thought maybe music you didn't like would do it, but I guess the louder and shriller the sound, the better."

"Thanks," Lan mumbled sarcastically. "What time is it..?"

"6:03:22AM. I said I would get you up early to study, remember?" He smiled. "Besides, it'll probably cheer you up to know that I downloaded all those comic pages that you wanted."

That seemed to be the right thing to say. "Yahoo! Really? Thanks, MegaMan!" Lan bolted off his bed and plopped down on his computer chair. "Bring up the folder!" His navi complied. "Awesome! This is great! I'm gonna be reading comics all day! Haha, I'll impress Dex with my vast knowledge!" He grinned, opening the file and the image file for the first page.

"You have school today," MegaMan reminded. "Also, I got you up early to study, remember?"

"Awww man, that's right..." He sighed, picking up his science book from off the floor next to his desk. It looked like those comics would have to wait until after school, and probably after he got back from the net arcade, too. Oh well. He flipped through the bright pages of the book until he found the fourth chapter. "See?" He held the open book up to the screen, flashing the two pages to MegaMan. "That's what I need to study."

"That's not very hard!" MegaMan encouraged. "You can remember all of that. Just take all the key points out of it and remember them. You did those experiments at school. Try to remember all of the observations you made in class, and you'll do fine!"

Lan put the open book onto his lap and scanned over the words. "You think that would be enough?"

"I think so. You can do it, Lan!"

"If that's all I need to know, then can I go back to sleep?" he asked hopefully. It would be nice to resume his dream about becoming the World Championship net battler, or to dream about getting good marks in school without actually _doing_ anything. MegaMan shook his head.

"If you're up, you might as well try to be ahead of the game for once!" he suggested. "Maybe you'll be on time for school today. I'm sure Ms. Mari would be pleased."

"Prob'ly." Lan got up off his computer chair and wandered around his room, gathering various things he'd need to put into his backpack. At least netsaving had saved him from going to school for afew days. He picked up his math notebook and text book off of his desk and piled them on top of his science book. Behind him, he didn't notice MegaMan fidget slightly on the computer screen. Having the PC hard drive loaded with needless junk was causing it to lag a little, and his navi was beginning to notice it.

"Lan, you really should clean out some of the stuff on your PC. It's getting a little full," he said, his voice slightly edged in concern. "Your dad said not to put too much onto it. It's not good to have it lagging like this."

"It'll be okay until after I read those comics. I'll just delete everything off, like I said." Lan turned around to look at MegaMan. "I guess it's not the best place for you if it's lagging, though. Sorry." He picked up his PET and pointed it at the PC's jack-in port. "MegaMan, jack out!" He set the little machine on its stand on his desk. "There. Is that better?"

"Much better. Thanks." He watched as Lan wandered around his room, trying to find his pencil. The boy tossed all of his blankets back onto his bed, and then got on his hands and knees to look under it. Surprisingly, it was there. Reaching under the bed, he pulled out his pencil, which was still in dire need of sharpening. No wonder his writting was so messy! Adding that to his little pile of things for school, he turned his attention to his messy hair. It was messy, but at least it was clean. He straightened it out a little with his fingers, and then tied his blue bandana around his forehead in the usual manner. That felt alot better.

Lan got dressed and brought his PET into the kitchen with him. His mother wasn't up yet, and his father wasn't home, so it was quiet. "Wow!" he said enthusiastically. "I'm the first one up!" He paused. "Errr, other than you, MegaMan." He wandered over to the fridge. "I want toast," he decided aloud. "Do we have any jam?"

"I can't see from here," MegaMan replied, "so I have no idea."

Lan retrieved two slices of bread and toasted them, and then proceeded to spread on a thick layer of jam. "Perfection!" he said, sticking half of one toast slice into his mouth. There was nothing better than warm toast with a nice thick layer of strawberry jam. He munched on it for a moment. "If you could eat, I'd give you some," he told MegaMan. "Looks good, eh?"

MegaMan quirked an eyebrow at Lan's jam-spreading handiwork. "Uh... Doesn't look to appetizing to me, but I'm not the one eating it." He watched as Lan managed to get the rest of his breakfast down in under a minute. "You always act like you're starving!"

"I know." He proceeded to clean up the small mess he had made. "So," he said, going off topic. "Dex wants a netbattle today, huh? Feeling up to kicking GutsMan's butt again?" He grinned cheekily.

"Dex is overconfident. I think that's why he loses," MegaMan decided.

At that moment, Mrs. Hikari shuffled out of her bedroom wearing her pink bathrobe. She blinked in surprise as soon as she saw her son. "Up already, Lan?" she asked. "And cleaning up your own messes, too?"

"Yep!"

She smiled at him. "That's good of you! It looks like you're starting to get more responsible." She walked around him and headed for the coffee maker. What was it with adults and coffee? Was it some sort of morning ritual? Once she had her coffee maker going, she sat down at the kitchen table. "What got you up so early?" she asked Lan curiously.

"MegaMan," Lan said honestly. "I was gonna study, and then I discovered I didn't have to, so I just stayed up."

"Well, at least you'll be on time for school," Mrs. Hikari pointed out.

"Lan sleeps like a rock. I'm surprised I woke him up at all," MegaMan said with a smirk.

Lan scowled at the two of them. "Cut it out! I like my sleep, okay?"

"Go make up your bed, dear," Mrs. Hikari told him, disregarding what he had said. "Then you'll have it done, right?"

"Awww, okay..." Lan picked up his PET and trudged off to his bedroom again. Getting up early had its downsides. Sure he'd be on time for school today, but now he had to do chores! Where was the fun in that? At least the rest of the day would be more interesting, except for the school portion. Seeing his friends would be good, though. "Haha," he thought smugly. "Dex is gonna lose again! He's gonna have to give me another one of his good battle chips!"

Lan got to school on time for once. Entering his classroom, he was greeted by several of his peers, including Yai. She looked him over in an analytical manner, expecting to see something out of the ordinary. Flipping one of her blonde braids indignantly over her shoulder, she walked up to him. "You're here on time for once! It's about time that happened!" She put her hands on her hips, her expression expectant. "So what got you up in time to get to school early, anyhow?"

"Nevermind," Lan said, dismissing her indirect insult to his unenthusiastic outlook toward school. At least she hadn't mentioned anything about his absence. He didn't want the whole school to find out about his netsaver missions. "Is Dex here yet?"

"That incompetant lout? He's just as bad as you when it comes to punctuality." Yai wasn't always the world's most _polite_ girl, although she was arguably the richest. Her friends were used to her by now, though. Sometimes she had 'bad' days. Nitpicky days, anyway. "He'll be here after the bell rings."

Maylu came up behind Lan, her backpack slung over one shoulder. "Lan! You're on time today! Wow!" She pulled her pink PET out of the pocket of her jacket.

"I wish you guys would stop rubbing it in." He too pulled out his PET. "Are we using the PETs in a lesson today?"

"Yes," responded Glide from in Yai's hand. Lan hadn't even noticed she had her navi with her today. "Ms. Mari informed the class on Monday that everyone was to bring their PETs to class with them on Wednesday."

"Oh! Really? Hehe, I always have mine with me, anyway." Lan smiled proudly at his blue terminal, containing DenTech's coolest hero-- MegaMan.EXE.

"I think most of us do," Maylu said. "PETs are important. Almost everybody owns one, and people who own them usually carry them around. They're convenient, y'know."

"Excuse me, children." Ms. Mari managed to make her way past Lan and his two friends. "Class will be starting in a moment." She didn't notice that Lan was at school on time. "Take your seats, please."

Lan shrugged and sat down in his usual place; the third row, two seats from the back. At least Ms. Mari had a lesser chance of noticing if he fell asleep from there. He plunked his backback onto the floor next to his chair. Yai took her place at the front of the classroom and folded her hands on top of her desk. Maylu looked back and forth undecidedly between her two friends for a moment, wondering where she should sit, before she decided to sit next to Yai. Their other classmates all took their usual spots, chatting to one another. Ms. Mari walked up to the head of the classroom. "Pay attention, please," she said calmly. The class settled down, becoming silent in afew moments. The school bell rang. "Class will now start. I see that--"

Dex appeared in the doorway, extremely short of breath. "I- I'm here," he panted.

Ms. Mari frowned. "And just in time, too. Have a seat, Dex."

The heavyset boy nodded, embarrased. He made his way to the back of the class and sat down behind Lan. "Bawled out again, eh Dex?" Lan whispered over his shoulder.

"Don't gimme a hard time, Hikari," Dex mumbled with a bit of a smirk, threatening him in the usually friendly manner.

"Dex! Lan! Please listen!" Ms. Mari shot looks at both of them, causing a portion of the class to turn and look, too. Lan felt his face go red. He wondered if Dex was as embarrassed as he was. Their teacher continued. "As I was saying," she went on, "I've noticed that you all remembered to bring your PETs to school today, like I asked. We're going to be doing a lesson with them. Everyone, please put your PET onto the desktop in front of you."

The class did as told.

"Now, we're going to try installing higher e-mail security levels into the PET. Can anyone remember the last security level they installed?"

"Four," said one boy.

"Two," said someone else.

"The newest version was 5.2," Ms. Mari informed. "It's suggested that everyone install this protection. Does anyone know why? Raise your hands, please."

A girl with dark hair put up her hand and was promptly chosen to answer. "Because there are new viruses going around, and some of them don't have cures yet, so we don't want them to infect the navis," she explained.

"Very good, Marlana."

Lan felt like he was going to fall asleep. He slid his PET back and forth between his hands on the wooden top of the desk to occupy himself. "Cut it out, Lan..!" MegaMan whispered. "Pay attention..! Or at least look like you're listening."

Lan looked at the ceiling and sighed in response.

"Everyone, please have your navis jack into the cyberworld via the nearest jack-in port." Ms. Mari gestured to the wall, where jack-in ports had been installed exclusively for the purpose of connecting school children's navis to the net from the convenience of their classroom. "There, they will find a warp over to the computer lab. Please jack-in and then head over to the computer lab."

The school children eagerly picked up their PETs and jacked in. Lan got up and wandered over to where Maylu and Yai were jacking in. Dex hurried after him.

"Glide, jack in!" said Yai.

"Jack in, Roll!" Maylu said a moment later.

"Aww, you guys don't make it sound very interesting," Lan told them. "Here. Do it like this!" He struck a dramatic pose, pointing the PET at the jack-in port. "JACK IN! MegaMan, power up!"

Several people turned and looked at him. Dex crossed his arms. "...show off."

Maylu chuckled. "Nevermind it. Let's get down to the computer lab!" The group of four went down the hall to where their teacher and some of their peers were waiting. Other classmates were following them down the hallway, too. Once the class had assembled and had been assigned to computers, their teacher continued instruction. Lan and Dex had been placed on opposite ends of the computer lab, although Ms. Mari had kept Yai and Maylu together.

"Now," she began. "have your navis log into the main net. Mr. Higsby's navi, NumberMan, will be providing you with the downloads you need. Have your navis retrieve them, and then head back to the 'SchoolComp' area that they're in now."

Of course, everyone followed instructions.

Lan couldn't hold back his yawn. "At least we're on the net," he said quietly to MegaMan. "But these update classes are boring. I already know all this stuff!"

"I know you do," MegaMan replied, "but not everyone else does. They have to learn how to do it from somewhere." He headed for the area that Ms. Mari had instructed to send the navis to, passing by several others that he assumed belonged to Lan's peers. NumberMan was waiting for them in the said spot. He noticed MegaMan right away.

"Ah! Hello, MegaMan. What are you doing here?"

"I'm with Lan at school," the blue netnavi replied. "I was sent here for updates for the PET."

"Oh yes, that's right! Lan's only in elementary school. I sometimes forget with all those netbattle tournaments you win and all." He gave MegaMan the closest thing to a smile that his rather geometric features could manage. "Here you go." He handed him the update he'd come for. "Version 5.2!"

"Thanks, NumberMan. I guess I'll wait for the others to show up."

Within another minute, more of Lan's peers' netnavis appeared. Glide, Roll and GutsMan were among them. It took them awhile to get past the others and get what was required from NumberMan, but as soon as they had gone about doing that, the trio headed for MegaMan.

"Hey, Mega!" Roll greeted. "Whatcha doing over here by yourself?"

"I was waiting for you three," he replied. "I guess we should get going before Ms. Mari wonders what's taking us so long." He started walking, gesturing for the others to follow. The other navis had began chatting amongst themselves as they headed back for the school computers, too.

"I suppose by now you've all heard about the mysterious internet 'bug' going around," Glide said. "Apparently, it's quite obscure, but I've heard it's infected some important navis. I wonder what it's about?"

"Prob'ly some Zero wannabe," GutsMan grunted in response. "Betcha it's gonna be infecting everyone soon."

"I bet there's some kind of reason as to why only important navis have been afflicted with it so far," Roll decided. "I bet whoever's doing this has a bigger plan, and doesn't want the authorities to figure them out. It would make sense!"

"That's true," Glide agreed. "It's probably some conspiracy."

"Something cooked up by some internet psycho," GutsMan added.

Roll tilted her head at MegaMan. He was walking in silence. "You okay, Mega?" she asked curiously. "You haven't said a thing yet..! Usually you like to contribute to conversations like this. Are you feeling okay?"

MegaMan offered a smile as consolation. "I'm fine, honest," he said. "I'm just feeling a little foggy because of all the downloading I had to do the other night. Lan's computer got loaded up with data, so it started lagging."

"That sounds awful. I'm sure he'll have it cleaned out soon if he knows it's causing a lag, though." Glide gave a reassuring smile. "Anyway, what have you been up to, MegaMan?"

"He's gonna netbattle with me after school," GutsMan proclaimed proudly. "And Dex and I are gonna win! We got some new chips from over at Higsby's. We ordered 'em in especially for tournament netbattles!"

"Shh! Guys, we're almost back to school!" Roll cautioned. "We don't want to interupt if the teacher is talking!"

"Roll's right. We ought to be quiet from here on out." Glide gave a nod. No one said anything else after that. Heading back into the computers at school, they discovered Roll had been right. Ms. Mari was explaining how to install security upgrades. They could also hear several children fiddling frustratedly with their PETs. MegaMan quietly made his way back to the PC that Lan was at. He was daydreaming again, obviously not taking in a single word that the teacher was saying. She had finished her explaination by now, and was trying to help a little girl who had been frustrated to tears when her PET froze up.

Lan yawned.

"I'm back, Lan."

"Awesome!" Lan cried. "I was bored to death sitting here. Didja get the download?"

"You bet. Want to jack me out so we can install it?"

Lan nodded and complied. "MegaMan, jack out!" His navi returned to the PET and immediately began to install the security program. It only took a minute.

"There's an informational page if you'd like to view it," MegaMan added, more out of habit than customary reasons.

"No thanks," Lan replied. "I can't wait until school's over. I have that dumb science test in the afternoon."

After awhile, everyone in the class managed to accomplish the 'gruelling' task of downloading and installing a better security program, and so they all headed back to the classroom. Ms. Mari had everyone hand in their math homework from Thursday and even began explaining something to do with geometry. At least, Lan _thought_ it was geometry. He only caught afew words of it here and there, since for the most part, he wasn't exactly paying attention. The day did drag by with surprisingly few lectures from the teacher about 'not talking out of turn' because of his ocassional chats to Dex. Lunch was a good part of the school day. He talked with his friends for awhile, but no one said anything about the bug that the navis had discussed.

Once morning had melted into afternoon and lunch was over, they headed back to their classroom. Lan took the dreaded science test, and although Ms. Mari did begin to explain new topics they would be talking about in the next few days, she didn't assign any new homework, which was a large plus. Lan intended to go to the net arcade and then read this Spiderman comics after school anyway. At long last, the bell rang at 2:30PM.

"Whew! What a relief! I thought the day would never be over!" Lan picked up his backpack and walked toward the now busy school hallway. He waved good bye to Maylu and Yai, and the two girls headed out the door to Yai's limo. Apparently, Maylu planned to go play at Yai's house today. Dex hustled down the hall after Lan, yanking a handful of battle chips out of his pocket.

"Lan!" he called. The boy stopped to wait for him as he lumbered down the hall to join him near the front doors. "You ready to battle?"

"Ready as ever," Lan said, unable to match Dex's extreme air of overconfidence. "What battle chips did you bring this time?"

Dex grinned sneakily. "Oh, just some special ones I ordered from Higsby's. I guess you'll have to watch and see how powerful I can be with them." He gave Lan a casual punch in the shoulder. "I'll see you at the net arcade, Hikari." He headed for the sidewalk, taking the opposite of the route that Lan planned to take.

"Boy, what a show-off!" MegaMan remarked.

"That's just Dex for yah," Lan responded cooly. "Now let's get to the net arcade and kick his butt! I told mom before I left for school that I'd be back before dinner. That gives us plenty of time, right?"

"I think so!"

"Good." He made his way to the net arcade. Dex was silly to take an alternate route. The street Lan had taken provided a much direct path to it. Now he would probably be ten minutes late, just because he'd taken a different street to make himself look cool. At least that would mean Lan could go check out some other net battler's battle chips while he waited. The net arcade's glowing neon sign soon greeted him, flashing in its usual manner. Already the place looked packed. There was probably some well known net battler in there that everyone enjoyed watching. He made his way in and bought some tickets for use on the arcade machines.

Pushing through the crowd around the net battle arena, Lan saw that he had guessed right. The boy who was net battling now was fairly well known. He had a cool netnavi and alot of battle chips, so people liked to watch him participate to see what he had up his sleeve. Luckily, the boy was just finishing his last round, resulting in a win over the other player's navi. "You did a great job," he congratulated to the loser. "You almost won, too! Great match." He smiled. "I have to go run some errands, though, so I should go." Several people groaned. "I'll be back tommorrow, though!" He waved, jacking his navi out of the arena and dissapearing into the crowd.

"Dibs on the net battle arena!" Lan cried, making a dash for it. Thankfully, no one objected. This was his favorite one to use, for reasons unknown. Several people sounded pleased to see him, already giving words of encouragement and praise toward both him and his navi.

"Who's MegaMan up again today?" queried a little kid behind him.

"GutsMan," Lan answered. "Now to wait for Dex to show up."

He compared battle chips with an older girl for afew minutes before Dex finally appeared out of the crowd. He posed dramatically. How embarrassing. "I, the great Master Dex," he proclaimed loudly. "hearby plan to kick Lan Hikari and MegaMan's butts today!" He raised his arms in triumph, as though he had already won. Lan tried not to laugh.

"Alright, let's jack in," Lan said.

"Right! Enough standing around." Dex smirked. "Jack in, GutsMan!"

GutsMan's clunky form appeared in the arena. He posed in a manner eerily similar to the way Dex had done just moments before him. Some people cheered, obviously net battle fans. Or maybe 'fans' mislead by Dex's bragging. It was hard to tell.

"Jack in! MegaMan, power up!"

In a second, MegaMan also appeared in the arena. A bunch of people behind Lan got really excited. Clearly, they were already liking this. It was good to have enthusiasts watching. Lan pocketed some battle chips from out of his backpack, keeping afew in his hand. "Alright, MegaMan! Let's do this!"

The navi nodded. "For sure!"

"I'm gonna stomp you, MegaMan!" boomed GutsMan. Obviously Dex had told him to say that. Was he trying to make this look like the wrestling federation or something? "Let's go!"

"Cold Punch, battle chip in! Download!"

GutsMan recieved the said battle chip from Dex and threw a punch at MegaMan. Too slow. MegaMan leapt over it with extreme ease. In a second, his arm turned into the megabuster, and he fired several shots at GutsMan. He was already winning and the match had scarcely even begun. His opponent tried to smash him into the ground with his massive hands, which also failed. He attacks were strong, but far from fast enough to even put a scratch on MegaMan. Lan decided to load a battle chip, too. It would make things more interesting, anyway.

"Wide Sword, battle chip in! Download!"

MegaMan's lower arm transformed into a digital blade. Apparently, Lan didn't plan to take out the heavy artillery for a battle such as this one. He ran at GutsMan and delivered a quick stroke with the sword. GutsMan flinched. "Pretty sneaky," he said. "But not sneaky enough..!" As MegaMan paused for barely longer than a second, GutsMan threw a full-force punch at him, shaking the whole arena as he missed, crashing his huge fist into the floor. MegaMan resumed his position in front of him.

"Spreader, battle chip in! Download!"

The blue natnavi's right arm transformed from a sword to a gun. He fired it once, catching GutsMan unaware as he tried to yank his massive fist out of the ground. The shot spread out, hitting him in several spots.MegaMan felt somewhat remorseful, having to battle a friend like this, especially when GutsMan quite honestly didn't seem to have a chance. Dex pushed him too hard. GutsMan growled and pulled his fist up with a mighty tug, swinging back around at MegaMan. Again, he missed. MegaMan was too strong and fast an opponent.

"Here! This'll help yah out!" Dex cried, trying not to look anxious. "Yo-Yo, battle chip in! Download!"

The spinning weapon came none too soon. GutsMan launched it just as MegaMan fired several more shots at him with the spreader and took up using the megabuster again. The yo-yo was a good choice. It was fast, and had decent enough aim to hit a quick target. It spun furiously, but MegaMan leaned out of the way in time, and it was retracted harmlessly back to GutsMan's arm. By now, both Dex and GutsMan were getting frustrated. It was a battle of will for Lan to stop from grinning. He had known the outcome of this battle before it even began.

"Had enough, Dex?" he said with a playful smirk. "I have a pocket full of battle chips still, y'know, and I haven't taken out the 'big guns' yet."

Dex growled. "You watch, Lan. We're gonna pulverize you!" He withdrew another chip from his pocket and studied it for a moment. "Needle shot, battle chip in! Download!" Another fast-moving weapon. GutsMan launched a small arsenal of needles at MegaMan. They were fast. Maybe they'd take him by surprise and hit him..!

MegaMan did a simple backflip, easily evading that attack, too. "This battle's done, Dex," Lan said honestly. "I dunno how many more shots it'll take before GutsMan's down for the count, but it doesn't look like it'll take many. Go on, MegaMan!"

"Right..!" He ran back in GutsMan's direction, planning to jump up and get in several good shots with the megabuster. It had been awhile since he battled GutsMan, and although the navi had been recustomised and improved, he was still clumsy. GutsMan barrelled toward him, planning to give him a nice faceful of fist power. With relative ease, MegaMan leapt clear over him, landing on his feet just behind the opposing navi's large form. He began to head for the side. Maybe he could get those shots in from there. It would feel wrong hitting from behind.

A strange feeling came over him suddenly. It felt like something within him was seizing up... sort of like the feeling one would get from being in an overloaded computer for too long. Something inside froze up for not even a second, but it was long enough. He stumbled. And then Lan's net warrior, without a scratch on him, collapsed.


	3. Part Three

The people in the crowd began talking amongst themselves, coming up with conclusions as to what had just happened. Lan felt his face drain of color. Dex was staring, his jaw hanging open. GutsMan blinked stupidly, wondering what he might have done wrong. MegaMan slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His thought process was spinning. What happened..? He got to his feet carefully, and was jacked out not even a second later. Lan clutched the PET protectively in his hands, visably worried. "MegaMan, are you okay?"

MegaMan smiled consolately. "I'm fine now. I'm sorry about the netbattle. Do you want me to log back in and try again?"

"No!" Lan cried. "It's okay! It's not your fault. I'm not going to make you fight anymore until dad gets home and takes a look at you..."

The navi felt unable to object. That was probably the best idea. He didn't want Lan to worry too much in the meantime, though. He assumed this was just something to do with Lan's computer still. It was probably nothing at all. Maybe Lan could plug the mouse into his computer again and use that to navigate for tonight. He didn't want to risk jacking back into that computer again until there were optimal amounts of free space on the hard drive. He gave Lan a slow nod as a reply.

Confused, Lan pocketed what remained of the battle chips in his hand and looked over to Dex. "Dex, I'd better get home. I can't make MegaMan fight like this."

"I understand, Lan," Dex said with an unusual amount of sympathy. "We'll try again some other time, pal."

"Thanks." Lan gave a vague smile, and still clutching his PET in both hands, headed out the door. The crowd actually cleared to let him go through. The whispering hadn't died down at all, either. He tried to ignore it, and hoped some sort of bad rumour wouldn't come of all this. He headed home quietly, wondering what to think. What if MegaMan had a virus? What if his dad didn't know how to fix it yet? "D'you... y'know... _feel_ weird?" Lan asked somewhat awkwardly. It was an awkwardness he rarely experienced while talking to his navi.

"I feel fine now," MegaMan said, trying to make the words sound as honest as they felt. "It was just sort of sudden. It stopped as quickly as it started."

"What stopped?"

MegaMan tried to choose his words carefully. Lan was human, so internal feelings probably weren't quite the same. "Well... it was kind of like everything inside me sort of froze up for a second. It caused a malfunction in my running processes, so I collapsed." He paused. "I'm sorry for making you worry."

"Don't apologise!" Lan offered quickly. "I've done worse to you before." He bit his lip. "I- I'm sorry." He had something of a grim feeling welling up inside him. A grim and fearful feeling that whatever was wrong was _very _wrong. He held the PET slightly closer to him as he walked. What morbid fear.

Lan got home in a much quieter fashion than usual. He didn't slam the door, and he didn't call out his arrival. His mother was in the kitchen, however, so she was well aware when he entered. She appeared surprised to see him. "Lan! It's only twenty after three! Weren't you going to go play with your friend Dex?"

"I... had to come home," Lan replied somewhat sullenly. "Is dad going to be home tommorrow?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Can I stay home?"

Mrs. Hikari turned in surprise, closing the cookbook she had been flipping through. Lan didn't sound like he was trying to avoid school, like he sometimes did when there were tests to be done. She walked over to her little boy and cupped his face in her hands. "Are you alright, sweetheart? Are you not feeling well?"

"MegaMan glitched up today, and I think maybe it's a virus. I want dad to check it out for me."

His mother gently took the PET from his hands, studying MegaMan's face curiously. Nothing was visably wrong with him, but his green eyes were a reflection of Lan's: concerned. She smiled at him, and then at Lan. "Don't get so worried, boys," she said to them. "Your father will be home soon, and I'm sure he can fix whatever's wrong." She put the PET back into Lan's hand and stroked back his hair. "So just turn off the PET for now and relax, okay?"

"Okay." Lan looked at MegaMan. "Is that alright with you? Ready to turn in?"

"Sure. See you tommorrow, Lan."

Lan put MegaMan into sleep mode and turned off the mini terminal. His mother was right. He had to try to calm down. His father would be home tommorrow, and then the problem would hopefully come to light. He went to his bedroom and set the PET down in its charger on his desk, and booted up the PC. For a second, he sat oblivious as to how he was supposed to access anything without his navi. How were you supposed to navigate _anything_ without it? Realising that his father still had computer mice for events such as this one, he made his way over to his parents' room to look for one in the closet. He found one. "Weird," he remarked, looking at it. He returned to his room and plugged it into the PC. With his right hand, he made the little arrow squiggle all over the screen while he got used to it. Where were..?

His desktop didn't have any icons or shortcuts on it, since navis ordinarily just brought up the programs for you. He right-clicked the screen, and re-enabled the menu. That was better. After half a minute of poking through files, he found his Spiderman comics. Ah, the spidey goodness! All 117 issues of it so far.

He read for awhile, trying to get his mind off of MegaMan. Would his father really be home tommorrow? It had been awhile. It felt like he hadn't seen him in months. He was seldom home. Work kept him away so much. It was cool that he was the head scientist and all, but it would be nice to see him a little more often... At least his mother was pretty much just a housewife. She didn't want to leave Lan all by himself, and so she didn't. Pushing those thoughts out of his mind, he opened up the next image file and resumed reading. It was a good thing MegaMan had left him something to do. Comics were a good time-consumer, especially if you had digitally aquired 117 issues all in one go.

Lan read for a good while. He decided that he was very much like Spiderman, in the way that he and Spidey were both cool heroes who no one knew the true identity of. No one knew Peter Parker was Spiderman, and no one knew Lan Hikari was a netsaver. Well, maybe Famous and Chief Kiefer and his dad and Chaud and-- oh screw it.

It was a good thought, anyway. He read his comics avidly until his mother called him for dinner. For some reason, his thoughts just weren't focusing. Was not having MegaMan around really such a hinderance to him? He plunked himself down at the kitchen table, and picked up his fork.

"Are you still fretting about MegaMan?" his mother queried. "Everything will be alright."

"It's not just that," Lan grumbled. "I have to go to school tomorrow, and MegaMan glitched up at the net arcade..."

"So? What does it matter that it happened at the net arcade..?"

"Mom!" Lan cried, flustered. "There was a ton of people there! Everyone at school is going to know that I'm not using my netnavi, and there are gonna be rumors that all kinds of stuff happened to him!"

"Calm down," Mrs. Hikari soothed. "Your father will be home by the time you get home from school, and when you bring your PET with you to school the next day, everyone will know everything must be alright."

"I guess..."

"Cheer up, dear. Besides, I'll pack you something nice for lunch tommorrow, alright? It'll help you feel better. So finish up your dinner!" She smiled.

"Okay." Lan picked up his knife and cut off a piece of his salmon, sticking it into his mouth. Lemon herb... Hmm, apparently she was cooking his father's favorite foods again already.

His mind wandered the whole time, which was really sort of a rare thing for him. His mind hardly ever did anything whatsoever. Oh well. After finishing off his dinner (and actually eating his vegetables), he wandered back into his room and flopped down in front of the computer. Ah, comics. How fair thou art..! He grinned and resumed reading. And he read. And he read. And he read. Issue thirty-two dragged on into issue seventy-six. Seventy-six dragged into eighty-something. Before he knew it, he was hardly even awake, and somehow, the words were still processing into his brain. Occasionally, he'd notice something in the storyline which enabled him to realise he was actually sort of just reading without thinking. When did Mary Jane find out Peter's secret, anyway? Maybe it was time for sleep. Lan heaved himself out of his computer chair and pulled off his bandana without untying it. What time was it? He gave a moment's glance toward his darkened PET screen. No sense in looking there for the answer.

"Mom?" he asked very loudly. "What time is it?"

"Seven forty five," she answered loudly from probably the livingroom. Bah. He couldn't sleep yet. A shower would make a good time filler..! Or he could phone somebody. Yes, that was a good idea. He would talk to one of his friends. But whom?

Maylu, he decided, and made his way into the kitchen.

He knew his friends' numbers by heart. It didn't take long for Maylu's mother to answer. Her warm smiling face blinked onto the screen. "Oh! Hello, Lan. I suppose you're calling for Maylu. Hold on a second."

"Heh, thanks."

"Maylu!" she called. The red haired girl appeared in the doorway behind her. "It's Lan."

"Oh!" She rushed past her mother, over to the screen, and her mother wandered off to another part of the house. "Lan! Are you alright?" Maylu asked, her voice edged in concern, as though it had been he who had collapsed and not MegaMan. Man, Dex was such a blabbermouth...

"Yeah, I'm fine," Lan responded. "Say, did you--"

"What happened to MegaMan? Dex said you left pretty quick!"

He fought to keep from frowning at her. "I... yeah, I did. He's okay." He paused. "Anyway, I--"

"He's not hurt, is he?"

Lan sighed. "No. I don't think so. He says he feels okay. Can we stop talking about it?"

"Oh... Yeah. I'm sorry." She smiled a little. "And hey! You aren't wearing your bandana!"

The boy ran a hand back through his hair. That's right... He had taken it off. "I took it off a sec ago. So, as I was going to say, did you upgrade Roll today, other than at school?"

"Nope. Why?"

"I dunno. Higsby told me he could get some good program upgrades for defense and accuracy and stuff. I thought you were thinking about upping Roll's speed."

"Mhmm. I don't have any money for it right now, though." Maylu tilted her head thoughtfully. "I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but when Dex told me about MegaMan, he sounded kinda down on himself, like it was his fault or something."

Lan smiled a little. "Heh, Dex... The big wuss. He knows GutsMan didn't even touch MegaMan. It's not his fault."

"So what did you do with him?"

"MegaMan? Oh... I just put him into sleep mode. My dad will be home tommorrow, so he can take a look."

"If you want, you can tell your dad that if he wants to reach you at school, he can call you on my PET. That way, you can be sure to know what's going on right away."

"Hey! Good idea. Thanks, Maylu." He rolled his shoulders, thinking distractedly of how to carry on the conversation. "So, wanna play soccer in the park on the weekend? I'm gonna ask Yai and Dex to come, too."

"Sure! Hold on, though..." She looked over her shoulder at the digital clock on the wall. "Roll," she said to her PET, which was somewhere off screen, "is the clock right? It looks kind of off."

"No. It's ten minutes ahead, Maylu," came Roll's voice in reply.

"Okay." She turned back to face the screen. "Sorry, Lan. I gotta go help my mom with a couple of things. Take care, okay?"

"I will. You, too. See you, Maylu."

"Bye, Lan!"

And the screen blinked out. Over at Maylu's house, having overheard the conversation between Maylu and Dex earlier, Roll was now slightly concerned. It had only been hours ago that she and her navi friends had lightly discussed the possibility of another navi virus going around. Was that why MegaMan was quiet? Had he been unwell? Were the net-ops even aware of the rumors of that virus? Surely Lan had realised that MegaMan's glitch was caused by _something_. Glitches like that were very _very_ infrquent, and MegaMan was programmed by Dr. Hikari himself. ...Oh dear.

Lan slept soundly until his mother came into the room to get him up for school. She was just as persistant as MegaMan, and since she wasn't a computer program, she could employ tactics such as prodding at him and trying to gently shake him awake. Eventually, she won the tiresome battle of getting her son up for school. He retrieved himself some breakfast, which consisted of a yogurt tube from the fridge, managed to get the wheels onto his sneakers, and scooted out the door just in time to make it to school. Well, five minutes late, but that was about standard for him.

He decided that today would be a good day for trying to sleep in class, which led Ms. Mari into several frustrated mini rants about how it was important to get enough sleep and pay attention in class. But he _did_ have enough sleep! School was just too ideal for sleeping through, in his opinion. Unfortunately, Yai sat in the desk diagonally across from him in the next row, Maylu was in front of her, and Dex was in the desk in the front row, closest to the door. So Yai was the closest, and she wasn't even close enough to talk to without getting caught. Darn.

During recess, Lan remained in class with his three friends. They were free to talk now. Out of the corner of his eye, he frequently noticed people watching him. News spread quickly, apparently, and as he'd suspected, everyone knew and noticed his lack of PET. In a quiet moment, he managed to catch afew quiet words being exchanged.

"And I heard MegaMan froze up and not even Dr. Hikari could fix 'im, so he had to get deleted!"

His father wasn't even in DenTech. How could he have failed to save MegaMan if he wasn't here? Stupid rumors.

"No! I heard GutsMan beat him up really bad in that netbattle."

GutsMan couldn't beat Glide in a netbattle, and Glide wasn't made for battling. There was no way Dex could beat Lan at anything, much less a netbattle. He was strong, but too slow and clumsy. He would have to ignore the stupid but discouraging rumors until his dad gave him some sort of heads-up.

It took awhile, though. Recess dragged back into class time. Fortunately, Ms. Mari decided today would be a good day for art, and so they got to draw. That was fun. Lan and his trio of friends pushed some desks together so they could chat and doodle at the same time, which worked out. Yai's picture came out the best. She drew something of a generic sunset beyond a mountainous landscape, but it looked very pretty, and she even colored it with some expensive pencils her father had bought for her that she had conveniently happened to bring to school with her that day. Apparently in something of a docile mood, Ms. Mari let her class draw until lunch time under the condition that the 'noise level stayed to a minium'.

Lunch was one of the best times of the day. You could go outside and play with your friends, and also, there was food. True to her word, Lan's mother had made him a really good sub-style sandwich and filled it with all kinds of things he liked. Mmmm. He was having such an enjoyable day that he actually almost forgot entirely about MegaMan or his father phoning, until he actually did. Twenty-five minutes into lunch, Maylu's PET let out a distinctive ring. The girl pulled her pink PET to eye level. The image of Dr. Hikari blinked on screen. "Hello, Maylu. Lan told me I'd be able to reach him via you. May I speak to him, please?"

"Oh! Of course!" Maylu smiled, handing her PET off to Lan. "Roll," she said quickly as he took it, "transfer over to Yai's PET with Glide so that Lan can talk to his dad in private."

"Sure thing," Roll said, complying.

Lan smiled grimly at his friends and rose from his seat to find a quieter corner of the lunchroom. Hopefully he wouldn't look all too conspicuous. "Dad..?"

Dr. Hikari nodded from on the small screen. Behind him, Lan recognised his own kitchen instead of the white walls of a laboratory. Indeed his father was home. "How are you, son?"

"Uh... good. Glad you're home." He managed a smile.

Yuuichiro chuckled softly. "You look pretty grim, Lan. I hope you haven't been like this all day."

"Nope. I was fine 'til now," he said a little too honestly. No point in lying to his own dad. "So how is he..?"

"Well," Dr. Hikari replied, losing eye contact as he reached off screen. "See for yourself." He held up Lan's blue terminal. MegaMan smiled a little and waved, looking exactly the same as the last time Lan had seen him the night before. Fine.

"But didn't mom tell you what happened?" Lan asked, baffled. "Was there anything wrong at all?"

"Actually, yes," the scientist responded. "Fortunately, it was easy to get rid of. You see Lan, MegaMan contracted some sort of a navi hacking bug. It's not noticable, and there are no program glitches usually until the navigator program itself shuts down. It's not a fatal bug, but it's an interferance, and is usually aimed at company navis because the downtime causes problems for the system, especially in security. Anyhow, the bug goes after the running processes in a navi program and stops them. Stopping minor processes isn't much of a problem, but there are vital processes that the navi needs in order to run properly. The bug worked on the small ones at first, but then went after one of MegaMan's vital processes."

"So is that why he glitched?"

"Yes. One of the processes was frozen, and even if it was for a hundreth of a second, it was enough to stop MegaMan.EXE from running properly, and so he glitched and fell, but it wasn't enough to shut him down."

"But... where did the bug come from?"

"That's what's got me wondering." Dr. Hikari frowned thoughtfully. "Things like that are usually like sub-viruses. A big virus attacks a program, and sometimes sends off little things like that. I don't know where you might have picked it up."

"My natsaver missions have been kinda funny recently," he admitted. "But... I don't think we've come across anything that looked suspicious."

"Excuse me," came MegaMan's voice from offscreen, "but Lan, maybe your computer dealt a card or two in this."

"Your computer?" Dr. Hikari queried Lan.

Lan felt his face get warm. That's right... He had an awful lot on his hard drive right now. Maybe he'd accidentally had MegaMan download something buggy? Or maybe his computer was so crammed that the firewall was malfunctioning. "Err... Right... See, dad, the other day I downloaded a bunch of stuff, so now my computer's kinda lagging." He quickly went on to prevent his father from mentioning how he had cautioned not to do that. "I'm almost done with the stuff, though, and I'll delete it right away."

The brown haired man sighed and pushed up his glasses. "I was also going to point out that you forgot to run that bug check like I asked. I'm not sure what gave MegaMan the bug in the first place, but the navi bug check on your computer probably would have caught it if you'd done it right after your netsaver missions like I told you to."

"I know," Lan said sheepishly. "I got sidetracked. I gotta go, though. I'll see you after school! Bye dad! Bye MegaMan!"

"Bye!" the other two said nearly simultaneously. And the little image blinked out.

Lan trekked back over to the lunch table where his friends were eyeing him worriedly. He handed Maylu her pink PET. "Thanks, Maylu."

"That's all you can say?" Yai chirped impatiently. "We'd like some sort of a 411 too, you know. We didn't all just hear your conversation."

"Yeah, Lan!" Dex agreed. "Spill! What's up?"

"Is everything okay?" Maylu asked. "You talked for longer than I'd thought you would."

"Sorry," he said, sitting down next to her and across from Yai and Dex. "Dad says he's okay. It was sort of a bug, but it's gone now."

Yai looked unimpressed. "All this fuss over a little thing like that? You probably could have fixed that yourself!"

"Hey! It's not like I knew! It looked more serious than that!"

"It's okay, you guys," Maylu said calmly. "It was just a mistake. Lan's right. It did seem worse than that."

"Maylu," Roll said, pulling the girl's attention to her PET screen.

"What is it, Roll?"

"Glide, GutsMan, Mega and I were actually talking about something the other day that you guys don't seem to have heard about," Roll said, somewhat fretfully. "There's appararently some sort of navi virus going around, but so far, it's only been striking big important navis. You know... ones who manage security in important buildings, or guard invaluable data."

Lan leaned over so he could see the screen, too. "What else have you guys heard?"

Glide appeared on Maylu's screen as well. "I'm afraid there hasn't been much word on it other than that," he said apologetically. "They're trying to keep the trouble quiet so that it won't cause any sort of fuss. The navis on the net recently have been discussing it a little here and there, however, trying to speculate who's navi would be the next target."

"Virus..." Lan repeated quietly. "My dad said something about that bug looking like some sort of subvirus. Do you think...?"

Glide frowned a little. "I'm not sure how likely it would be that a navi we know could have contracted that virus. You'd probably pick up a subvirus off of a navi that was in close proximity, or in relation to yours somehow, such as allied on a job, and that thought doesn't seem applicable here, for some reason."

"Yeah," his pink clad friend replied. "Lan, it would have to come from someone, and obviously none of _us_ have it. Who else could it be? And why would the subvirus target MegaMan?"

_Because I'm a netsaver_, Lan thought in reply.

Lan burst through the front door in his usual manner. "I'm hoooooome!" he called loudly enough to have announced his presence even to the furniture downstairs. His father looked over his shoulder from his place on the couch with his newspaper and coffee. It was good to see him there, looking as though he'd never left to begin with.

"Hello, Lan. Your mother just left afew minutes ago to do some shopping." He picked up the PET off the coffee table next to his mug and tossed it lightly in one hand. "I suppose you're sounding chipper again now that you know everything's back in order."

"Haha, wouldn't doubt it," MegaMan replied. "That's Lan for you."

"MegaMan!" Lan cried with an oddly unprecented amount of joy. He flung his backback onto the nearest chair before dashing over to his father and giving him a big hug as he carefully tugged the terminal from his hand. "It's good to see you, dad..!"

"Good to see you too."

The brown-haired boy smiled at the familiar green eyes watching him patiently on screen. "And it's good that nothing's seriously wrong with you."

"It's good to _know_ there's nothing wrong with me," MegaMan added with a small chuckle. "It just leaves us to wonder where I got it from."

"--Which reminds me," Lan added quickly. "I heard something at school today. You guys never told us about that virus!"

MegaMan blinked stupidly, which was quite the rarity for him. "Only the navis knew about it? If I'd know that, I'd probably have said something. Even still, I didn't get much of a chance. I heard about it at school the day I glitched. I mean, after school, we went straight to the net arcade..."

"That's right..."

"What's going on?" Dr. Hikari asked. "You heard about something, Lan?"

"The navis knew about this navi virus that's been striking down all the big important internet hot-shots!" Lan explained.

"Oh that." His father took a sip from his green mug of coffee. "I heard about that, yes. I've been working on a disinfectant as of late. We were supposed to keep hush-hush about that, though. The lab's worried that people would start panicking, thinking that World Three is making a comeback or something. Besides, it's only taking down important ones right now. Civilians with no tie-ins to the government or any big buisnesses have nothing to worry about."

"Then why isn't Yai's dad's company getting messed up?"

"He hired scientists to deal with it as soon as he found out. With his money, their system has the best protection money can buy... And even some that money _can't_." He smiled a little.

"Do you think it's possible that what I had was the subvirus version of that big virus that's been going around?" MegaMan ventured.

"I thought that originally, but then I didn't see any logic behind it. I mean, who do we know, even vaguely, that managed to get that virus? I haven't heard anything. We don't have any tie-ins to an infected navi as far as I know."

MegaMan paused. "Wait... When was the last time we heard from Chaud?"

Lan stopped to think back. "Uhmm... a day ago or something? I dunno."

"Yeah. Didn't Famous tell him that at the last meeting that he was supposed to keep you up to date and vice versa? Firstly, we didn't tell him about that un-named guy we encountered, and secondly, Chaud is really diligent. Isn't it strange that he didn't call you after that last netsaver mission that he took instead of you?"

"Maybe nothing happened."

"Doesn't matter!" his navi insisted. "Chaud would tell you that. He doesn't _like_ keeping in touch with us, but if it has to be done, he does it. And we haven't heard a thing."

"But I wasn't using my PET. Maybe he called while you were asleep?"

"I'd know about that. The bottom line is, it's weird that Chaud didn't contact us since we last saw him."

"That's strange," Dr. Hikari observed. "The best way to find out would be to ask. Give him a call, Lan."

"Aww, but I don't like Chaud," the boy complained. "He acts like he's so much better than me!"

"He doesn't," MegaMan said. He smiled playfully. "I think you're just jealous."

"Of Chaud? No way! Why would I wanna be a stuck-up techno whiz like him?"

"He gets better grades than you do," suggested the blue navi teasingly.

"Well who cares? He can have his... prodigy..ness.. all to himself! I don't care!"

"'Prodiginess' is not a _word_, Lan."

"D'you think I care?"

Dr. Hikari laughed a little. "Boys, boys-- cool it. Lan, it's alright. You're just calling to see if there's any interferance. You won't have to talk long if the call goes through, anyway."

"Fine," Lan grumbled. "Call Chaud, MegaMan."

"Sure." He brought up a darkened new call window on the screen. Brrrrring. Brrrrring. Brrrrring. Brrrring.

Brrring.

Brrring.

Brrring.

Chaud didn't pick up. MegaMan tilted his head. "That's funny. He always has ProtoMan with him..." He closed the call window. "I think it's about time we got suspicous."

"I think so, too," Dr. Hikari decided. "Perhaps you can go and investigate a little."

The office was quiet and tidy. A neat stack of fresh paper sat at the corner of Chaud's otherwise clear desk as the prodigous boy sat in his large chair, drumming his pen on the desk top. He had finished his work for the day, and at the moment, he could think of nothing to occupy his mind with but thought. Running a hand back through his black and white hair, he sighed and reclined slightly in his chair. Without the drum of his pen against the desk, there was virtually no sound in the office aside from the faint hum of the heater. He exhaled audibly.

The door creaked very faintly, and Chaud perked up slightly. Lan poked his head into the doorway. Chaud sighed very lightly sunk back in his chair again, but Lan didn't seem to notice.

"What is it?" Chaud asked, point-blank.

Lan shifted his weight uncomfortably and walked fully into the room, stopping in front of the large desk. "I, uhm..."

"Stop looking so staunch," MegaMan whispered.

"Quiet, you!" Lan hissed before shooting his full attention back to Chaud. The boy blinked silently at him. "Uh, yeah, anyway..." He cleared his throat slightly. "How'd your net saver mission go?"

"We obtained no information pertaining to the darkloids or what their motive is."

Lan leaned rather obnoxiously onto Chaud's desk with his hand. Chaud only eyed him quietly, making no remark. "I was wondering if you heard about that navi virus."

"I have." Chaud pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, walking to the wall of window behind him and turning his back to Lan. "I take it you felt a little of the aftermath."

Lan lost his balance and crashed onto the carpet unintentionally before ungracefully regaining his standing position by pulling himself up on the desk. He pretended it hadn't happened. Chaud, of course, didn't say anything anyway. "Aftermath?" he queried.

Chaud sighed very lightly, as though in vague impatience. "I'm sure you were informed that this navi virus sends out subviruses, targeting navis in relation to the infected one. MegaMan recieved a bug, didn't he?" It almost sounded more like a statement than a question.

"Yeah," Lan answered. "So, ProtoMan got..?"

"Deleted? No." Chaud turned around fully so that he was facing Lan again. "But he is infected and out of commission until further notice. If you got a 'email' from me a day or so ago, that was the virus sending out the first part of the subvirus, which grows on its own."

"And the unknown caller?" MegaMan added.

"Also the virus," the boy replied. "That was the signal to install the bug into the navigator system."

"I guess that explains pretty much everything," MegaMan decided. "But what do we do about it? Lan and I can't handle everything by ourselves, but we'll try."

"Hey! We can, too!"

"Lan, be honest," MegaMan told him firmly. "There'll probably be more netsaver missions to come, and we can't do all of them. Sometimes there might be two that need to be handled in different places at the same time."

Chaud gave a light nod. "Mm. You'd best be going. I have things to do. Contect Chief Keifer if you have any doubts." He gave an expressionless look towards the PET in Lan's hand. "...Either of you."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Again, thanks a ton to the people who read this, and thanks to those of you who have reviewed. I appreciate it very, very much. Thanks for reading this! Part Four is next. _:shot for being obvious:_


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